Girls lax leaves it all on the field in double overtime loss vs. Wilson

Hood River Valley High School girls lacrosse played to an exciting double-overtime finish Wednesday evening against a tenacious and undefeated Wilson squad. The Trojans scored first in the final sudden-death period to nab the 9-8 win on HRV turf and maintain their standing atop the Portland League’s leaderboard.

Although a disappointing result after an intense outing, the game was a breakthrough for the HRV girls, who were picked apart in a 13-6 loss last week by the same team.

“Coming off a big loss to them last week, we came into tonight’s came with nothing to lose,” coach Erin Curry said after the game. “I’m so proud of the girls; they absolutely played with heart and left everything on the field.”

Kristin Lago led the team in scoring with her second hat-trick of the week, the first of which came Monday in the Eagles’ 14-13 win over Grant. The senior captain is the highest-scoring player on the team with 16 goals so far this season. Kaili Duffy scored twice Wednesday, including a clutch play assisted by Hannah Hurley to tie the game with 25 seconds left in the first overtime period. Erin Mayer and Kayla Van Hoose scored the other two goals for the Eagles. On the other end of the field, goalie Cristina Silva was credited with 14 saves.

The close result was a testament to the determination of the HRV girls, who played much of the game either one or two players down due to penalties.

“We had a couple mistakes that cost us big time,” Curry explained. “We had four major penalties before the end of the first half. Once you have four major penalties, you have to play a man down the rest of the game, and every penalty after that you lose another player.”

With a halftime score of 3-2, the girls faced an uphill battle knowing they would have to play man-down the entire second half.

“The girls knew that had to play smart since they were down a player,” Curry said. “But about five minutes into the second half we had an unfortunate call that gave us a fifth penalty, which meant we had to play another man down. At that point we knew we have to play the best lacrosse possible since we were at such a huge disadvantage.”

Lago scored the final regulation goal for HRV to put the team ahead by a goal as the final minutes of the game ticked away. Wilson’s Natalie Shishido scored her fourth of five goals in the game with less than a minute left in the half, driving a nail through the Eagles’ hopes of an upset and forcing an overtime period.

“Wilson scored a goal fairly quickly in overtime,” Curry said. “With only 25 seconds left in the six-minute period, Hannah Hurley drove the ball all the way to goal, Wilson’s defense collapsed on her, and she made a brilliant assist to Duffy, who rocketed the ball into the upper corner of the goal to tie the game and force a three-minute sudden death double overtime.”

Using numbers to their advantage, Wilson was able to slip in the first goal to end the game and take the win.

The girls moved on to host the other undefeated team in the Portland League, Oregon Episcopal School, Friday evening at HRVHS. Results were not available as of press time.

Next week the team has three games: Monday at Cleveland, Wednesday at home vs. Central Catholic and Friday at Lincoln.